4 questions to ask when deciding how to use NAV dimensions in your business (part 1 of 15)

If you’re just getting started with Microsoft Dynamics NAV for your business, you’ve probably heard the term dimensions, but you don’t really know what that means yet. You may be someone in the finance area for your company, or you may be an IT person. Eventually, at some point in your planning process, your partner is going to have “the talk” with you. This is an important talk, and it can be a little scary or even a little bit embarrassing, but it is absolutely necessary. The talk will probably start with,  “have you thought about how you’ll clean up your chart of accounts”, or “we need to discuss how you will restructure your chart of accounts”, or “you could realize some serious efficiencies in your posting processes by reducing your chart of accounts”, or “holy cow, 4000 accounts is a whole lot, how do you remember all that?”.

Here are the four questions you should be asking yourself when deciding if you need to use dimensions at your company:

1)  How long is your chart of accounts?

2)  Do you recognize a number that looks like this?  01-810-51320-627539

3)  How often do you answer this question?  How do I code .  .  .

4)  How many reclassifying entries are you making every month?

You might get the idea by now that using dimensions allows you to clean up your chart of accounts, reduce it in size, and increase your efficiency by doing so, and you would be exactly right. At its most basic, using dimensions will allow you to replace your old multi-segmented account numbers

with something that looks a little bit more like this.

Keep reading this month as we continue our series, 15 Days of NAV Dimensions.